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$Title{Dr. Samuel Johnson On Milton
Part III}
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$Date{1889}
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Title:       Dr. Samuel Johnson On Milton
Author:      Johnson, Dr. Samuel
Date:        1889

Part III

     Being driven from all public stations, he is yet too great not to be
traced by curiosity to his retirement, where he has been found by Mr.
Richardson, the fondest of his admirers, sitting "before his door in a gray
coat of coarse cloth, in warm sultry weather, to enjoy the fresh air; and so,
as in his own room, receiving the visits of the people of distinguished parts
as well as quality." His visitors of high quality must now be imagined to be
few; but men of parts might reasonably court the conversation of a man so
generally illustrious, that foreigners are reported by Wood to have visited
the house in Bread Street where he was born.

     According to another account, he was seen in a small house, "neatly
enough dressed in black clothes, sitting in a room hung with rusty green; pale
but not cadaverous, with chalk-stones in his hands.  He said that if it were
not for the gout his blindness would be tolerable."

     In the intervals of his pain, being made unable to use the common
exercises, he used to swing in a chair, and sometimes played upon an organ.

     He was now confessedly and visibly employed upon his poem, of which the
progress might be noted by those with whom he was familiar; for he was
obliged, when he had composed as many lines as his memory would conveniently
retain, to employ some friend in writing them, having, at least for part of
the time, no regular attendant.  This gave opportunity to observations and
reports.

     Mr. Philips observes that there was a very remarkable circumstance in the
composure of "Paradise Lost," "which I have a particular reason," says he, "to
remember; for whereas I had the perusal of it from the very beginning, for
some years, as I went from time to time to visit him, in parcels of ten,
twenty, or thirty verses at a time (which, being written by whatever hand came
next, might possibly want correction as to the orthography and pointing),
having, as the summer came on, not being showed any for a considerable while,
and desiring the reason thereof, was answered, that his vein never happily
flowed but from the autumnal equinox to the vernal; and that whatever he
attempted at other times was never to his satisfaction, though he courted his
fancy never so much; so that, in all the years he was about this poem, he may
be said to have spent half his time therein."

     Upon this relation Toland remarks that in his opinion Philips has
mistaken the time of the year; for Milton, in his elegies, declares that with
the advance of the spring he feels the increase of his poetical force, redeunt
in carmina vires.  To this it is answered that Philips could hardly mistake
time so well marked; and it may be added that Milton might find different
times of the year favorable to different parts of life.  Mr. Richardson
conceives it impossible that such a work should be suspended for six months,
or for one.  It may go on faster or slower, but it must go on.  By what
necessity it must continually go on, or why it might not be laid aside and
resumed, it is not easy to discover.

     This dependence of the soul upon the seasons, those temporary and
periodical ebbs and flows of intellect, may, I suppose, justly be derided as
the fumes of vain imagination.  Sapiens dominabitur astris.  The author that
thinks himself weather-bound will find, with a little help from hellebore,
that he is only idle or exhausted.  But while this notion has possession of
the head, it produces the inability which it supposes.  Our powers owe much of
their energy to our hopes; possunt quia posse videntur.  When success seems
attainable, diligence is enforced; but when it is admitted that the faculties
are suppressed by a cross wind or a cloudy sky, the day is given up without
resistance, for who can contend with the course of Nature?

     From such prepossessions Milton seems not to have been free.  There
prevailed in his time an opinion that the world was in its decay, and that we
have had the misfortune to be produced in the decrepitude of Nature.  It was
suspected that the whole creation languished, that neither trees nor animals
had the height or bulk of their predecessors, and that every thing was daily
sinking by gradual diminution.  Milton appears to suspect that souls partake
of the general degeneracy, and is not without some fear that his book is to be
written in an age too late for heroic poesy.

     Another opinion wanders about the world, and sometimes finds reception
among wise men; an opinion that restrains the operations of the mind to
particular regions, and supposes that a luckless mortal may be born in a
degree of latitude too high or too low for wisdom or for wit.  From this
fancy, wild as it is, he had not wholly cleared his head, when he feared lest
the climate of his country might be too cold for flights of imagination.

     Into a mind already occupied by such fancies, another not more reasonable
might easily find its way.  He that could fear lest his genius had fallen upon
too old a world, or too chill a climate, might consistently magnify to himself
the influence of the seasons, and believe his faculties to be vigorous only
half the year.

     His submission to the seasons was at least more reasonable than his dread
of decaying nature, or a frigid zone, for general causes must operate
uniformly in a general abatement of mental power; if less could be performed
by the writer, less likewise would content the judges of his work.  Among this
lagging race of frosty grovellers he might still have risen into eminence by
producing something which they should not willingly let die.  However inferior
to the heroes who were born in better ages, he might still be great among his
contemporaries, with the hope of growing every day greater in the dwindle of
posterity.  He might still be a giant among the pigmies, the one-eyed monarch
of the blind.

     Of his artifices of study, or particular hours of composition, we have
little account, and there was perhaps little to be told.  Richardson, who
seems to have been very diligent in his inquiries, but discovers always a wish
to find Milton discriminated from other men, relates "that he would sometimes
lie awake whole nights, but not a verse could he make; and on a sudden his
poetical faculty would rush upon him with an impetus or aestrum, and his
daughter was immediately called to secure what came.  At other times he would
dictate perhaps forty lines in a breath, and then reduce them to half the
number."

[See The Blind Milton: Dictating Paradise Lost to his daughter.]

     These bursts of light and involutions of darkness, these transient and
involuntary excursions and retrocessions of invention, having some appearance
of deviation from the common train of nature, are eagerly caught by the lovers
of a wonder.  Yet something of this inequality happens to every man in every
mode of exertion, manual or mental.  The mechanic cannot handle his hammer and
his file at all times with equal dexterity; there are hours, he knows not why,
when his hand is out.  By Mr. Richardson's relation, casually conveyed, much
regard cannot be claimed.  That in his intellectual hour Milton called for his
daughter "to secure what came," may be questioned; for unluckily it happens to
be known that his daughters were never taught to write; nor would he have been
obliged, as is universally confessed, to have employed any casual visitor in
disburdening his memory, if his daughter could have performed the office.

     The story of reducing his exuberance has been told of other authors, and,
though doubtless true of every fertile and copious mind, seems to have been
gratuitously transferred to Milton.

     What he has told us, and we cannot now know more, is, that he composed
much of this poem in the night and morning, I suppose before his mind was
disturbed with common business; and that he poured out with great fluency his
unpremeditated verse.  Versification, free, like his, from the distresses of
rhyme, must, by a work so long, be made prompt and habitual; and, when his
thoughts were once adjusted, the words would come at his command.

     At what particular times of his life the parts of his work were written,
cannot often be known.  The beginning of the third book shows that he had lost
his sight; and the introduction to the seventh that the return of the king had
clouded him with discountenance, and that he was offended by the licentious
festivity of the Restoration.  There are no other internal notes of time.
Milton, being now cleared from all effects of his disloyalty, had nothing
required from him but the common duty of living in quiet, to be rewarded with
the common right of protection; but this, which, when he skulked from the
approach of his king, was perhaps more than he hoped, seems not to have
satisfied him: for no sooner is he safe than he finds himself in danger,
"fallen on evil days and evil tongues, and with darkness and with danger
compassed round." This darkness, had his eyes been better employed, had
undoubtedly deserved compassion; but to add the mention of danger was
ungrateful and unjust.  He was fallen indeed on evil days; the time was come
in which regicides could no longer boast their wickedness.  But of evil
tongues for Milton to complain required impudence at least equal to his other
powers; Milton, whose warmest advocates must allow that he never spared any
asperity of reproach or brutality of insolence.

     But the charge itself seems to be false; for it would be hard to
recollect any reproach cast upon him, either serious or ludicrous, through the
whole remaining part of his life.  He pursued his studies, or his amusements,
without persecution, molestation, or insult.  Such is the reverence paid to
great abilities, however misused: they who contemplated in Milton the scholar
and the wit were contented to forget the reviler of his king.

     When the plague (1665) raged in London, Milton took refuge at Chalfont,
in Bucks; where Elwood, who had taken the house for him, first saw a complete
copy of "Paradise Lost;" and, having perused it, said to him, "Thou hast said
a great deal upon 'Paradise Lost;' what hast thou to say upon Paradise found?"

     Next year, when the danger of infection had ceased, he returned to
Bunhill Fields, and designed the publication of his poem.  A license was
necessary, and he could expect no great kindness from a chaplain of the
Archbishop of Canterbury.  He seems, however, to have been treated with
tenderness; for though objections were made to particular passages, and among
them to the simile of the sun eclipsed in the first book, yet the license was
granted; and he sold his copy, April 27, 1667, to Samuel Simmons, for an
immediate payment of five pounds, with a stipulation to receive five pounds
more when thirteen hundred should be sold of the first edition; and again,
five pounds after the sale of the same number of the second edition; and
another five pounds after the same sale of the third.  None of the three
editions were to be extended beyond fifteen hundred copies.

     The first edition was of ten books, in a small quarto.  The titles were
varied from year to year; and an advertisement and the arguments of the books
were omitted in some copies, and inserted in others.

     The sale gave him in two years a right to his second payment, for which
the receipt was signed April 26, 1669.  The second edition was not given till
1674; it was printed in small octavo; and the number of books was increased to
twelve, by a division of the seventh and twelfth; and some other small
improvements were made.  The third edition was published in 1678; and the
widow, to whom the copy was then to devolve, sold all her claims to Simmons
for eight pounds, according to her receipt given December 21, 1680.  Simmons
had already agreed to transfer the whole right to Brabazon Aylmer, for
twenty-five pounds; and Aylmer sold to Jacob Tonson half, August 17, 1683, and
half, March 24, 1690, at a price considerably enlarged.  In the history of
"Paradise Lost" a deduction thus minute will rather gratify than fatigue.

     The slow sale and tardy reputation of this poem have been always
mentioned as evidences of neglected merit, and of the uncertainty of literary
fame; and inquiries have been made, and conjectures offered, about the causes
of its long obscurity and late reception.  But has the case been truly stated?
Have not lamentation and wonder been lavished on an evil that was never felt?

     That in the reigns of Charles and James, the "Paradise Lost" received no
public acclamations, is readily confessed.  Wit and literature were on the
side of the court; and who that solicited favor or fashion would venture to
praise the defender of the regicides?  All that he himself could think his
due, from evil tongues in evil days, was that reverential silence which was
generously preserved.  But it cannot be inferred that his poem was not read or
not, however unwillingly, admired.

     The sale, if it be considered, will justify the public.  Those who have
no power to judge of past times but by their own, should always doubt their
conclusions.  The call for books was not in Milton's age what it is in the
present.  To read was not then a general amusement; neither traders, nor often
gentlemen, thought themselves disgraced by ignorance.  The women had not then
aspired to literature, nor was every house supplied with a closet of
knowledge.  Those, indeed, who professed learning were not less learned than
at any other time; but of that middle race of students who read for pleasure
or accomplishment, and who buy the numerous products of modern typography, the
number was then comparatively small.  To prove the paucity of readers, it may
be sufficient to remark that the nation had been satisfied from 1623 to 1664 -
that is, forty-one years - with only two editions of the works of Shakespeare,
which probably did not together make one thousand copies.

     The sale of thirteen hundred copies in two years, in opposition to so
much recent enmity, and to a style of versification new to all and disgusting
to many, was an uncommon example of the prevalence of genius.  The demand did
not immediately increase; for many more readers than were supplied at first
the nation did not afford.  Only three thousand were sold in eleven years; for
it forced its way without assistance; its admirers did not dare to publish
their opinion; and the opportunities now given of attracting notice by
advertisements were then very few; the means of proclaiming the publication of
new books have been produced by that general literature which now pervades the
nation through all its ranks.

     But the reputation and price of the copy still advanced, till the
Revolution put an end to the secrecy of love, and "Paradise Lost" broke into
open view with sufficient security of kind reception.

     Fancy can hardly forbear to conjecture with what temper Milton surveyed
the silent progress of his work, and marked its reputation stealing its way in
a kind of subterraneous current through fear and silence.  I cannot but
conceive him calm and confident, little disappointed, not at all dejected,
relying on his own merit with steady consciousness, and waiting without
impatience the vicissitudes of opinion and the impartiality of a future
generation.

     In the mean time he continued his studies, and supplied the want of sight
by a very odd expedient, of which Philips gives the following account:

     Mr. Philips tells us, "that though our author had daily about him one or
other to read, some persons of man's estate, who, of their own accord,
greedily catched at the opportunity of being his readers that they might as
well reap the benefit of what they read to him as oblige him by the benefit of
their reading; and others of younger years were sent by their parents to the
same end; yet excusing only the daughter by reason of her bodily infirmity and
difficult utterance of speech (which, to say truth, I doubt was the principal
cause of excusing her) the other two were condemned to the performance of
reading, and exactly pronouncing of all the languages of whatever book he
should, at one time or other, think fit to peruse - viz., the Hebrew (and, I
think, the Syriac), the Greek, the Latin, the Italian, Spanish, and French.
All which sorts of books to be confined to read, without understanding one
word, must needs be a trial of patience almost beyond endurance.  Yet it was
endured by both for a long time, though the irksomeness of this employment
could not be always concealed, but broke out more and more into expressions of
uneasiness; so that at length they were all, even the eldest also, sent out to
learn some curious and ingenious sorts of manufacture, that are proper for
women to learn, particularly embroideries in gold or silver."

     In the scene of misery which this mode of intellectual labor sets before
our eyes, it is hard to determine whether the daughters or the father are most
to be lamented.  A language not understood can never be so read as to give
pleasure, and very seldom so as to convey meaning.  If few men would have had
resolution to write books with such embarrassments, few likewise would have
wanted ability to find some better expedient.

     Three years after his "Paradise Lost" (1667), he published his "History
of England," comprising the whole fable of Geoffrey of Monmouth, and continued
to the Norman Invasion.  Why he should have given the first part, which he
seems not to believe, and which is universally rejected, it is difficult to
conjecture.  The style is harsh; but it has something of rough vigor, which
perhaps may often strike, though it cannot please.

     On this history the licenser again fixed his claws, and before he would
transmit it to the press tore out several parts.  Some censures of the Saxon
monks were taken away, lest they should be applied to the modern clergy; and a
character of the Long Parliament and Assembly of Divines was excluded; of
which the author gave a copy to the Earl of Anglesey, and which, being
afterwards published, has been since inserted in its proper place.

     The same year were printed "Paradise Regained" and "Samson Agonistes," a
tragedy written in imitation of the ancients, and never designed by the author
for the stage.  As these poems were published by another bookseller, it has
been asked whether Simmons was discouraged from receiving them by the slow
sale of the former.  Why a writer changed his bookseller a hundred years ago,
I am far from hoping to discover.  Certainly he who in two years sells
thirteen hundred copies of a volume in quarto, bought for two payments of five
pounds each, has no reason to repent his purchase.

     When Milton showed "Paradise Regained" to Elwood, "This," said he, "is
owing to you; for you put it in my head by the question you put to me at
Chalfont, which otherwise I had not thought of."

     His last poetical offspring was his favorite.  He could not, as Elwood
relates, endure to hear "Paradise Lost" preferred to "Paradise Regained." Many
causes may vitiate a writer's judgment of his own works.  On that which has
cost him much labor he sets a high value, because he is unwilling to think
that he has been diligent in vain; what has been produced without toilsome
efforts is considered with delight as a proof of vigorous faculties and
fertile invention; and the last work, whatever it be, has necessarily most of
the grace of novelty.  Milton, however it happened, had this prejudice, and
had it to himself.

[Hear Paradise Regained]
His last poetical offspring was his favorite.

     To that multiplicity of attainments and extent of comprehension that
entitled this great author to our veneration, may be added a kind of humble
dignity, which did not disdain the meanest services to literature.  The epic
poet, the controvertist, the politician, having already descended to
accommodate children with a book of rudiments, now, in the last years of his
life, composed a book of logic for the initiation of students in philosophy;
and published (1672) Artis Logicae plenior Institutio ad Petri Rami Methodum
concinnata; that is, "A new Scheme of Logic, according to the Method of
Ramus." I know not whether, even in this book, he did not intend an act of
hostility against the universities; for Ramus was one of the first oppugners
of the old philosophy who disturbed with innovations the quiet of the schools.

     His polemical disposition again revived.  He had now been safe so long
that he forgot his fears, and published a "Treatise of True Religion, Heresy,
Schism, Toleration, and the best Means to prevent the Growth of Popery."

     But this little tract is modestly written, with respectful mention of the
Church of England, and an appeal to the Thirty-nine Articles.  His principle
of toleration is, agreement in the sufficiency of the Scriptures; and he
extends it to all who, whatever their opinions are, profess to derive them
from the Sacred Books.  The papists appeal to other testimonies, and are
therefore, in his opinion, not to be permitted the liberty of either public or
private worship; for though they plead conscience, "we have no warrant," he
says, "to regard conscience which is not grounded in Scripture."

     Those who are not convinced by his reasons may be perhaps delighted with
his wit.  The term Roman Catholic is, he says, "one of the Pope's bulls; it is
particular universal, or catholic schismatic."

     He has, however, something better.  As the best preservative against
popery, he recommends the diligent perusal of the Scriptures, a duty from
which he warns the busy part of mankind not to think themselves excused.

     He now reprinted his juvenile poems, with some additions.

     In the last year of his life he sent to the press, seeming to take
delight in publication, a collection of "Familiar Epistles in Latin;" to
which, being too few to make a volume, he added some academical exercises,
which perhaps he perused with pleasure, as they recalled to his memory the
days of youth, but for which nothing but veneration for his name could now
procure a reader.

     When he had attained his sixty-sixth year, the gout, with which he had
been long tormented, prevailed over the enfeebled powers of nature.  He died
by a quiet and silent expiration, about the 10th of November, 1674, at his
house in Bunhill Fields; and was buried next his father in the chancel of St.
Giles, at Cripplegate.  His funeral was very splendidly and numerously
attended.

     Upon his grave there is supposed to have been no memorial; but in our
time a monument has been erected in Westminster Abbey "To the Author of
Paradise Lost," by Mr. Benson, who has in the inscription bestowed more words
upon himself than upon Milton.

     When the inscription for the monument of Philips, in which he was said to
be soli Miltono secundus, was exhibited to Dr. Sprat, then Dean of
Westminster, he refused to admit it; the name of Milton was, in his opinion,
too detestable to be read on the wall of a building dedicated to devotion.
Atterbury, who succeeded him, being author of the inscription, permitted its
reception.  "And such has been the change of public opinion," said Dr.
Gregory, from whom I heard this account, "that I have seen erected in the
church a statue of that man, whose name I once knew considered as a pollution
of its walls."

     Milton has the reputation of having been in his youth eminently
beautiful, so as to have been called the Lady of his college.  His hair, which
was of a light brown, parted at the foretop, and hung down upon his shoulders,
according to the picture which he has given of Adam.  He was, however, not of
the heroic stature, but rather below the middle size, according to Mr.
Richardson, who mentions him as having narrowly escaped from being short and
thick.  He was vigorous and active, and delighted in the exercise of the
sword, in which he is related to have been eminently skilful.  His weapon was,
I believe not the rapier, but the backsword, of which he recommends the use in
his book on education.

     His eyes are said never to have been bright; but, if he was a dexterous
fencer, they must have been once quick.

     His domestic habits, so far as they are known, were those of a severe
student.  He drank little strong drink of any kind, and fed without excess in
quantity, and in his earlier years without delicacy of choice.  In his youth
he studied late at night; but afterwards changed his hours, and rested in bed
from nine to four in the summer, and five in the winter.  The course of his
day was best known after he was blind.  When he first rose, he heard a chapter
in the Hebrew Bible, and then studied till twelve; then took some exercise for
an hour; then dined, then played on the organ, and sang, or heard another
sing; then studied till six; then entertained his visitors till eight; then
supped, and, after a pipe of tobacco and a glass of water, went to bed.

     So is his life described; but this even tenor appears attainable only in
colleges.  He that lives in the world will sometimes have the succession of
his practice broken and confused.  Visitors, of whom Milton is represented to
have had great numbers, will come and stay unseasonably; business, of which
every man has some, must be done when others will do it.

     When he did not care to rise early, he had something read to him by his
bedside; perhaps at this time his daughters were employed.  He composed much
in the morning, and dictated in the day, sitting obliquely in an elbow-chair,
with his leg thrown over the arm.

     Fortune appears not to have had much of his care.  In the civil wars he
lent his personal estate to the parliament; but when, after the contest was
decided, he solicited repayment, he met not only with neglect, but sharp
rebuke; and, having tired both himself and his friends, was given up to
poverty and hopeless indignation, till he showed how able he was to do greater
service.  He was then made Latin secretary, with two hundred pounds a year;
and had a thousand pounds for his "Defense of the People." His widow, who,
after his death, retired to Namptwich, in Cheshire, and died about 1729, is
said to have reported that he lost two thousand pounds by entrusting it to a
scrivener; and that, in the general depredation upon the church, he had
grasped an estate of about sixty pounds a year belonging to Westminster Abbey,
which, like other sharers of the plunder of rebellion, he was afterwards
obliged to return.  Two thousand pounds, which he had placed in the Excise
Office, were also lost.  There is yet no reason to believe that he was ever
reduced to indigence.  His wants, being few, were competently supplied.  He
sold his library before his death, and left his family fifteen hundred pounds,
on which his widow laid hold, and only gave one hundred to each of his
daughters.

     His literature was unquestionably great.  He read all the languages which
are considered either as learned or polite; Hebrew with its two dialects,
Greek, Latin, Italian, French, and Spanish.  In Latin his skill was such as
places him in the first rank of writers and critics; and he appears to have
cultivated Italian with uncommon diligence.  The books in which his daughter,
who used to read to him, represented him as most delighting, after Homer,
which he could almost repeat, were Ovid's Metamorphoses and Euripides.  His
Euripides is, by Mr. Cradock's kindness, now in my hands: the margin is
sometimes noted; but I have found nothing remarkable.

     Of the English poets he set most value upon Spenser, Shakespeare, and
Cowley.  Spenser was apparently his favorite; Shakespeare he may easily be
supposed to like, with every other skilful reader; but I should not have
expected that Cowley, whose ideas of excellence were so different from his
own, would have had much of his approbation.  His character of Dryden, who
sometimes visited him, was, that he was a good rhymist, but no poet.

     His theological opinions are said to have been first Calvinistical; and
afterwards, perhaps when he began to hate the Presbyterians, to have tended
towards Arminianism.  In the mixed questions of theology and government he
never thinks that he can recede far enough from popery or prelacy; but what
Baudius says of Erasmus seems applicable to him, magis habuit quod fugeret,
quam quod sequeretur.  He had determined rather what to condemn than what to
approve.  He has not associated himself with any denomination of Protestants:
we know rather what he was not than what he was.  He was not of the Church of
Rome; he was not of the Church of England.

     To be of no church is dangerous.  Religion, of which the rewards are
distant, and which is animated only by faith and hope, will glide by degrees
out of the mind, unless it be invigorated and reimpressed by external
ordinances, by stated calls to worship, and the salutary influence of example.
Milton, who appears to have had full conviction of the truth of Christianity,
and to have regarded the Holy Scriptures with the profoundest veneration, and
to have been untainted by any heretical peculiarity of opinion, and to have
lived in a confirmed belief of the immediate and occasional agency of
Providence, yet grew old without any visible worship.  In the distribution of
his hours, there was no hour of prayer, either solitary or with his household;
omitting public prayers, he omitted all.

     Of this omission the reason has been sought upon a supposition which
ought never to be made, that men live with their own approbation, and justify
their conduct to themselves.  Prayer certainly was not thought superfluous by
him, who represents our first parents as praying acceptably in the state of
innocence, and efficaciously after their fall.  That he lived without prayer
can hardly be affirmed; his studies and meditations were an habitual prayer.
The neglect of it in his family was probably a fault for which he condemned
himself, and which he intended to correct, but that death, as too often
happens, intercepted his reformation.

     His political notions were those of an acrimonious and surly republican,
for which it is not known that he gave any better reason than that "a popular
government was the most frugal; for the trappings of a monarchy would set up
an ordinary commonwealth." It is surely very shallow policy that supposes
money to be the chief good; and even this, without considering that the
support and expense of a court is, for the most part, only a particular kind
of traffic, for which money is circulated without any national impoverishment.

     Milton's republicanism was, I am afraid, founded in an envious hatred of
greatness, and a sullen desire of independence; in petulance impatient of
control, and pride disdainful of superiority.  He hated monarchs in the state
and prelates in the church; for he hated all whom he was required to obey.  It
is to be suspected that his predominant desire was to destroy rather than
establish, and that he felt not so much the love of liberty as repugnance to
authority.

     It has been observed that they who most loudly clamor for liberty do not
most liberally grant it.  What we know of Milton's character, in domestic
relations, is, that he was severe and arbitrary.  His family consisted of
women; and there appears in his books something like a Turkish contempt of
females, as subordinate and inferior beings.  That his own daughters might not
break the ranks, he suffered them to be depressed by a mean and penurious
education.  He thought women made only for obedience, and man only for
rebellion.

     Of his family some account may be expected.  His sister first married to
Mr. Philips, afterwards married to Mr. Agar, a friend of her first husband,
who succeeded him in the Crown Office.  She had by her first husband Edward
and John, the two nephews whom Milton educated; and by her second, two
daughters.

     His brother, Sir Christopher, had two daughters, Mary and Catharine; and
a son, Thomas, who succeeded Agar in the Crown Office, and left a daughter
living, in 1749, in Grosvenor Street.

     Milton had children only by his first wife: Anne, Mary, and Deborah.
Anne, though deformed, married a masterbuilder, and died of her first child.
Mary died single.  Deborah married Abraham Clark, a weaver in Spitalfields,
and lived seventy-six years, to August 1727.  This is the daughter of whom
public mention has been made.  She could repeat the first lines of Homer, the
Metamorphoses, and some of Euripides, by having often read them.  Yet here
incredulity is ready to make a stand.  Many repetitions are necessary to fix
in the memory lines not understood; and why should Milton wish or want to hear
them so often?  These lines were at the beginning of the poems.  Of a book
written in a language not understood, the beginning raises no more attention
than the end; and as those that understand it know commonly the beginning
best, its rehearsal will seldom be necessary.  It is not likely that Milton
required any passage to be so much repeated as that his daughter could learn
it; nor likely that he desired the initial lines to be read at all; nor that
the daughter, weary of the drudgery of pronouncing unideal sounds, would
voluntarily commit them to memory.

     To this gentlewoman Addison made a present, and promised some
establishment, but died soon after.  Queen Caroline sent her fifty guineas.
She had seven sons and three daughters; but none of them had any children,
except her son Caleb and her daughter Elizabeth.  Caleb went to Fort St.
George, in the East Indies, and had two sons, of whom nothing is now known.
Elizabeth married Thomas Foster, a weaver in Spitalfields; and had seven
children, who all died.  She kept a petty grocer's or chandler's shop, first
at Holloway, and afterwards in Cock Lane, near Shoreditch Church.  She knew
little of her grandfather, and that little was not good.  She told of his
harshness to his daughters, and his refusal to have them taught to write; and,
in opposition to other accounts, represented him as delicate, though
temperate, in his diet.